Vincent in China

Since my lab-mate Remy bought a new camera, we went on a little trip in Wuchang to train ourself.

Military demonstration on my university campus. Very certainly students enrolled in military training.

Some cap being sold in the street.

Little figures carved in a tree trunk.

A (Chinese) butterfly.

Wuhan city beach, one of the thousands of lake in Wuhan. Too bad the water don't look so clean, because with the almost 30°C we got today...

There is even palm tree here.

The restaurant I'm used to go to eat for my lunch, with the home made noodles, very impressive to see, I'll take some pictures of this art later. This a typical Gansu (甘肃) restaurant, and since Gansu people are mostly muslim, it's also a muslim restaurant without pork.

October 1st is Chinese National day, an important time in Chinese life, not because of the origin of the day itself, which was the date chosen to be the declaration of the PRC (People Pepublic of China) by Mao Zedong (毛泽东), but mainly because it's National Day holidays from 1st to 10th.

So we decided to head to Hankou (汉口) on the other side of the YangTse(or ChangJiang 长江) river in Wuhan (武汉), to see the firework which will be fired on the shores of the river. After a little more than one hour in a crowded bus, we arrive at our destination, or almost since a very big part of the road along the Yangtse was closed and for pedestrian.

Already, a very massive crowd of people heading to the place where the firework will occur, a very impressive stream of people. The closer we are from the destination, the fewer space we have to walk or stand, the crowd is now really compact and it's impossible to walk without pushing or making move someone else.

In this area, there is a big empty space without trees or building heading to the Yangtse, and everyone guess that the firework will be fired in this area. There is also an open space area where people can go buying tickets to have a better view. We tried to reach this area but so many people were pushing and moving, it became kind of dangerous to stay in here, so we headed back to our initial position, waiting for the beginning of the firework.

Then two first "boom boom", but nothing in the sky, everyone try to see from where it comes, then another burst, and we finally noticed that the firework is fired under the building with the open space, very low in the sky. There is no way we cna move to see in a better way, after the building there are a lot of high trees. So open space building was the only solution to have a good view of the firework, so we barely see the colours and the sounds, but we were part of this big day !

Some Chinese tried to convert me, they almost succeed !

I'm in China for less than 6 months for an internship in Wuhan University of Technology. My subject is a part of a big project which have been undermine 1 year ago, aiming at developing a router filled with the technology and the hardware required to filter, control the network stream at several levels. Allow some protocols to be used on the networks or not, restrict the bandwidth to users based on their IP, and my part is about QOS (Quality of Service). In a nutshell, I have to manage the bandwidth according to the kind of traffic, and to who it's supposed to be delivered.

For now I've been mostly reading documentation about QOS, routing and Firewall settings, and mostly the two very useful commands iptables and tc available on every Linux distribution.

After a "short trip" of 17 hours in train from Chengdu, the train stops to Wuchang train station, first feeling, it's hot, really hot and wet weather. Two persons from the University are here to pick me up and drive me to the dormitory for foreign students. After a quick chat about the fact I don't want to rent a flat in the campus, I take an hotel room for few days at the North of the campus.

The first night is "cool", compared to the afternoon, but still probably around 30 degrees. Some part of the sky are blue and stars are even visible among the lights of the city. At this time, I say to myself "Finally, Wuhan is not so bad !".A lot of people told me that Wuhan was really polluted and the sky always full of a big heavy pollution fog, but for my part, I'll discover this in few days.

After one day in the city, what I can say is that this city is a mess. Even according to "Chinese standard" of messy and dirty things. The streets and the sidewalks are sometimes mixed (including cars, bikes or buses driving on them. The sidewalks are in a very bad state, uneven, part of them in mud or big stones. Another point is the trashes or rubbish, spread on the streets or on the road close to sidewalks. Every little shop or restaurant throw their trashes like this after 10 or 11 pm, and when the air is still hot and wet, I let you imagine the pretty smell walking in those streets.

To finish with this bad picture of Wuhan, let's talk about the smell you can encounter in the streets. Usually, walking in the streets is a subtle mix of smell from little restaurants, nice smell of Chinese dishes, from time to time, the smell of a bus just accelerating in a black cloud of smoke, and then, a very very bad smell, coming from you don't know where, but really present. It's very unpleasant to walk in an area where this smell is spreading, and even more when you are about to eat.

People are driving in a crazy way, a lot of bikes going on the sidewalks to avoid traffic jam, big street intersections are a mess, with cars on every side of the road and in any way. Chinese driving is like a giant gig of horns and honks.

To sum up, Wuhan is the most dirty/messy city I've been in China. Guangzhou, Chengdu, Kunming or even smaller cities in the countryside are a lot more cleaner and representative of China.